Mr.hershey And His Company

By Author: Kinhomchan
Total Articles: 66
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The food products that bear Milton S. Hershey's name represent an ongoing dedication to quality and value—a commitment established by Hershey Foods' unique founder.

In the early 1900s, Milton Hershey made one of the great American for-tunes through dogged persistence and the courage to pursue a dream. Though he was modest and unassum¬ing3 in appearance, Mr. Hershey was a shrewd and determined businessman. He had a genius for timing and an instinctive ability to choose loyal and able people to help him.The early years of Milton Hershey in¬stilled4 in him the value of hard work. When it became apparent his talents did not lie in printing, he went on to become an apprentice5 to a Lancaster, PA6, candy-maker and, in 1876 at the age of 18, opened his own candy shop in Philadelphia. The business failed after six years. The next stop was Denver, Colorado, where he accepted a job with a local caramel7 manufacturer. There, he learned that superior results could be achieved when fresh milk was used in the caramel-making process.
Mr. Hershey moved on to Chicago in 1883, then to New Orleans and later to New York ...
... City—attempting to establish his own candy business in each location. He returned to Lancaster, PA, in 1886, where, after raising the necessary capital, he began the business which established his reputation as a candy-maker—the Lancaster Caramel Company.

Mr. Hershey became fascinated with German chocolate-making machinery on exhibit at the Chicago International Exposition in 1893. He bought the equipment for his Lancaster plant and soon began producing his own chocolate coatings for caramels.

In early 1894, the Hershey Chocolate Company was born as a subsidiary8 of his Lancaster caramel business. In addition to chocolate coatings, Mr. Her-shay made breakfast cocoa, sweet chocolate and baking chocolate.

In 1900, Mr. Hershey sold the Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million. However, he retained. The chocolate manufacturing equipment and the rights to manufacture chocolate, believing a large market existed for affordable con-fections9 that could be mass produced. He proceeded to prove his case.

He returned to his birthplace, Derry Church, and located his chocolate manufacturing operation in the heart of Pennsylvania's dairy country, where he could obtain the large supplies of fresh milk needed to make fine milk chocolate. In 1903, with the money he received for his caramel business, he began to build what is now the world's largest chocolate manufacturing plant. It opened in 1905, and Mr. Hershey's great contribution to the American food industry had begun—the mass production of milk chocolate. Milton Hershey's employees were manufacturing and selling products which would become American traditions.

The chocolate business continued to thrive under Mr. Hershey's guidance, as 2/to do the community he established around it10. A bank, department store, school, park, churches, golf courses, zoo, and even a trolley system (to bring in workers from nearby towns) were all built in rapid succession. Al-though the town was well established by its 10th anniversary in 1913, Mr. Hershey started a second building boom in the 1930s. During the Depression, he kept men at work constructing a grand hotel, a community building, a sports arena, and a new office building for the chocolate factory.

Mr. Hershey's belief that an individual is morally obligated to share the fruits of success with others resulted in significant contributions to society. Together with his wife, Catherine, he established the most prominent of his philanthropic endeavors—the Hershey Industrial School—in 1909, now called Mil-ton Hershey School. Saddened because they had no children of their own, the Hershey was anxious to put their growing fortune to good use.

Today, the 10,000-acre school houses and provides education for nearly 1, 100 children whose family lives have been disrupted. Through the Hershey Trust Company, the School owns 31.4 percent of Hershey Foods' Common Stock class's outstanding, controls 76. 0 percent of the corporation's voting shares, and is a direct beneficiary of Hershey Foods' success. (In addition, Hershey Trust Company owns 100 percent of the stock of Hershey Entertainment and Resort Company, another firm developed from several smaller businesses established by Milton Hershey.)